Why is RentaCoder.com so bad now?

I would like to see a bit of description of your project (RFP). Because as a Bidder on such emarket place I skip some projects for bidding due to heavy demanding nature of the buyer.

For example some buyers write in their project details as follows :

"Please do not bid if you accept payment in advance" or
"We will only pay once the project is complete and running" or
"We only accept programmers from XYZ country" or
"only providers with more than 10 ratings" or
"Only providers with expertience in XYZ kind of projects"

So certain limitations for bid also limit the number providers to bid on project.
Your case might be same or different but I would certainly like to comment as a provider on various similar kind of websites. That might help you to get more bids.

 

Never tried Rentacoder before but I have use getafreelancer i seldom won the bids I only won like 3x since I joined way back 2007 1 of them didn't pay. so I got tired of freelancing.. ugh

as for being a buyer.. in GAF I get the "we can do this for you" then after giving them the info they'll reply "sorry we can't do this on time" ugh!

 

Yep, but sometimes even very good programmers need to outsource too

 

I disagree, I'm from the US and I managed Chinese programmers for about three years for a consulting firm. It has been my experience that a lack of common context makes cross cultural communication extremely difficult when communicating the user's wants and needs.

These guys were HIGHLY motivated, HIGHLY intellgent, and HIGHLY skilled. but the country DOES matter ...

It's hard enough translating "Business Speak" to and from "Geek Speak" but to address a user's needs without a common cultural context adds substantial overhead to the project management process, often negating the cost advantage realized by the lower price per programmer hour.

When bidding, all people see are bottom line $, not "the whole picture".

 

You could also try using other sites like MySoftwareProject (www(dot)mysoftwareproject(dot)net).

 

I tried out elance.com to try to get some stuff on the side but have since quit trying to bid on projects. It's all either Indian firms or firms that may have one person in the U.S. who has to communicate client project needs to a development team in India. My first problem, obviously, is that North American developers can't compete with the prices from the Middle East. My second problem is that half the work I was doing on Elance was "this Indian firm did this for me, can you please fix it". The quality of the work coming out of these Indian firms is absolutely awful, but they catch these buyers with their low prices. An established freelancing site that was open to U.S./Canada companies only would be a godsend.

 

I'm having trouble finding good coders on the site these days. There are a number of projects that I can't even select a bidder on due to the fact that no one seems to understand the requirements. Years ago the site was one of the better ones out there, now I get more productive results from coders on scriptlance.

 

I agree that the country does matter, especially China. Look at the roots of education system and use of language within the country.

India could have been in the same situation but thanks to Britishers ( i know few people won't like this phrase) due to which English Education became possible in India and after 200 years we have a population of good English speaking people. You will be surprised but here in India the people who speak English are considered well educated compared to other languages. Always an English speaker gets an edge over regional language.

I get lots of my government related stuff done because of this only, the reason is majority of government employees are English Illiterate

 

Pretty much there are a lot of kiddos crawling in freelancing sites that barely knows half of the programming language or know how to cover the most important thing, that is SECURITY.

I myself started freelancing a few months back and have been making good money. That is to say that I still have a long way to learn such things as design patterns I still find time to learn and amend my errors on certain areas.

I'm a very picky person when it comes to security, and I have been hired a few times to fix real states scripts, and believe me the whole thing could have been exploited in matter of seconds. Sadly, I ended up not enhancing the security because the person wasn't willing to pay and I'm pretty sure I'm not offering charity services.

I know where you are going, you didn't spend years learning a language just to get screwed over by some other people offering low fees and poor practice.

I can't say I'm a professional in PHP but I do know my limit. Do note that when I meant kiddos, not all of them are bad. I have met very young talented programmers that have left me in awe, then again I'm myself young too.

Remember guys:

QUALITY + CHEAP == Something that will never happen.

Also about the fees on elance, well I can surely pay them but I think I'm going to spend some time on learning some things more before going there. I love rentacoder, there are not many foreigners in there unlike getafreelancer.

I think they should make the design more complex, maybe it will help the U.S coders more

 

Ok, so here, among the US coders, it is a general notion that Indian coders can can't code well.

I am an Indian programmer(hobbyist-code for myself only) but I will approve of that general notion.

I have found that websites designed by 'leading Indian firms having 10 yrs experience' are vulnerable to SQL injection and XSS attacks. Many Designers in India use frontpage to throw up a crap page and charge at $25/page.

I am actually a medico by educational qualification and a part-time higher secondary tutor at a private organization(teaching is like passion!). I actually learned programming because I needed to simplify and automate many of my teaching-tasks.

 

I've been using elance for a few jobs with mixed results. I think it's easier to find qualified people via online portfolios, specialized forums etc then contact them. However, it's very time consuming.

Any thoughts on odesk anyone?

 

RAC doesnt appeal to me. the bids are low and buyers are expecting lower. i use odesk and has been great so far! and we all know cheaper doesn't always mean better.

 

maybe you're one of the guys that wants huge sites for $30 upon completion? I've seen lots of these projects... that's insulting.

 

This can be thrown at the buyers as well. They always go for the cheap fish and never care if it's good for anything at all. Even now i have a client who's paid almost $10k to some crappy company in IN for a networking site, and they are delaying, no progress is done, code is crap so far, data model sucks, and not only that, but they always become rude and start calling names when i point out the issues. Still, the client won't dump them because of the time and money spent so far.

 

Well never used RAC. I usually use scriptlance if you are interested.

 

Agreed, but the 'buyer' I am speaking here is ThinkDigit.com, the online identity of India's leading IT magazine 'Digit'. I am sure they did not intend to hire the cheap ones.

just in case you want proof, I can PM or email you the snaps I took when I managed to intrude into their admin panel. I also blogged about it but I have removed that post now as I changed to wordpress.

All these experiences teach me one this: Put blind-faith in none. Always verify ones claims, especially when you are gonna PAY for the service. Well-dressed and well-spoken people may not always be good problem solvers. People can learn fast to dress well and speak well but their brains won't always improve at the same pace

 

RentaCoder's fee is much more than some of the others.

 

RAC is good in my opinion, they are very professional, never had problems with them, only issues with a few scammers using RAC, but they are everywhere.

 

I think I'm quite a good programmer (ten years experience) and was using RAC only twice. Most of the bidders think people will code nearly for free. They want great quality, fast work, great experience and 3-10$ an hour. It's mayby a price for ukrainian or asian coder but not for someone from US or Europe. I prefer to look for customers on professional pages connected with some quality software like vbulletin where people know that noone will work for free and they pay 20-50$ an hour.

 

I habve always been in favour of Freelancer the best one,
Try that you will forget Rent a coder
Their service is good